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30 August 2014

This year, 2014, the Historical Novel Society has introduced for the first time, an annual award for the best Indie / Self-Published Historical Novel, with winner and runner-up prizes kindly sponsored by Orna Ross, bestselling literary novelist and director of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and Geri Clouston of Indie B.R.A.G. There were eight eventual short-listed writers, from which four finalists were chosen by Orna Ross, with award-winning historical novelist Elizabeth Chadwick selecting the winner and runner-up.

Our judges found it very difficult to make their selections as the quality of writing

was excellent, and to thank the authors, I would like to feature them all here on my Blog

So please welcome Finalist

Linda Proud and her novel A Gift for the Magus

I began writing what turned out to be a trilogy set in the
Florentine Renaissance back in 1974. The final volume was published in 2008. It
was my life’s work. I’d dedicated everything to it, been a little obsessed,
shall we say (on one embarrassing occasion I’d dated a cheque ‘1476’ and got a
kindly note from Lloyds saying they were not the Medici bank). So what happens
when you finish your life’s work? Do you retire? Die? In a slightly panicky
fashion I didn’t dare take so much as a day off, but what was going to be next?

A friend
supplied the answer. ‘How about a novel on Cosimo de’ Medici?’ Now that caught
my interest, for he was the grandfather of Lorenzo the Magnificent, a major
character of the trilogy, and so much of the glory of the second part of the
fifteenth century was rooted in Cosimo’s age in the first half. The idea of a
biographical novel did not appeal. Where’s the story? Where does it begin and
end? But then I remembered another story of the time, one that had made a cameo
appearance in the trilogy. One of the characters is Filippino Lippi, apprentice
to Botticelli and bastard son of a liason between a friar and a nun. Now,
there’s a story. And it could act as a prequel to the trilogy.

Naturally
it has already been written, many times, most famously by Robert Browning in
the poem, Lippi. He’s a loveable
rogue, our Fra Filippo Lippi, and the Victorians enjoyed his naughtiness. But
what was the real story here? After all, this gambling, womanising friar of the
order of the Carmelites had painted some of the holiest, most beautiful images
of the early Renaissance. The one I used on the cover, of the Madonna and
Child, is so beloved by the Florentines they call it ‘la Lippiana’.

Leon
Battista Alberti, who wrote ‘On Painting’ (1436), said that to be a good
painter you must be a good man. This is the kind of conundrum I enjoy solving.
Either Alberti was wrong, or Lippi was good, because there is no denying the
quality of his art.

Research
was difficult. The life of Lippi has been written by art historians who, like
all historians, only have to give you the facts and are not obliged to make
sense of them. Almost immediately I learned that Lippi hadn’t abducted just one
nun from her convent: he had abducted them all. Five nuns. All living in the
house of a painter in the centre of a gossipy little town near Florence called
Prato, a place where they liked to birch whores naked. On the same square, what
is now the cathedral and its ecclesiastical administration. So Fra Filippo
lived with five nuns under the eye of both church and town. How on earth did he
get away with that?

On such
questions, novels are built.

The
relationship between Cosimo and Filippo, his favourite painter in an age which
boasted such alpha males as Masaccio and Brunelleschi, is brought to life by
Vasari in his Lives of the Painters.
I only had to contextualise the stories, such as the one where Cosimo locked
Filippo in a room in his house so that he would finish a painting, and Filippo
escaped by knotting bedsheets together and climbing out of the window. I had to
find out where in Lippi’s life these things happened and make a guess as to
which painting he was being made to complete. A tradition that as a young man
he was captured by pirates and spent two years as a slave in North Africa I
made part of the story. Novelists can do that.

There
are self-portraits of Filippo. He was not a handsome man. Pudgy-faced and
portly. But he was beloved by the very beautiful Lucrezia Buti (to whom he was
not faithful). I had to put this humpty dumpty of a story back together again
and make all the contradictions in one character psychologically plausible. In
the end Lippi made sense through the eyes of his apprentice, the fourteen year
old Alessandro Botticelli, who loved his master while standing appalled at much
of what he did.

Are good
painters good men? If so, then perhaps our ideas of what constitutes goodness
need examination. It is the philosopher, Marsilio Ficino, who in the story
takes Filippo apart, examines the details, weighs his heart and does not find
him wanting.

With A Gift
for the Magus my time in the Florentine Renaissance is over. I loved every
moment of those thirty years of research and writing about Italy, but my
research trip to Prato was probably the last. I am wearied now by air travel
and, besides, the Tuscany of my imagination is a whole lot more wonderful than
the real thing with its autostrade, valley industries, poverty, government
corruption, triple-dip recession. In my writing life, I’m into injury time, and
I’m spending it in Iron Age Britain where research trips can be done in a day,
or even just walking out from where I live. It’s here, right here, under my
feet. All I have to do is make sense of what facts are known and find the
story.

It looks like it might be turning into a trilogy…

THE ART OF THE SPIRITUAL INTELLECT

Lindsay Clarke praises the remarkable work
of a seriously under-rated novelist

Since the
monetary values of the corporate world began to dominate the mainstream
publishing houses several fine novelists who are neither celebrities nor
mass-market best-sellers have found it increasingly difficult either to get
their work into print at all or for their books to receive much attention from
the media. Fortunately a number of small independent publishers have found courage
to do something about this unsatisfactory state of affairs. As both co-founder
of Godstow Press and an excellent novelist whose work has largely been ignored
by the literary establishment, Linda Proud is a significant figure in this
development, and her strong, beautifully presented new novel demonstrates
precisely why it matters.

A Gift
for the Magus is a prequel to her Botticelli
Trilogy of novels and this review wants to draw to all four books the
serious attention they deserve. Mostly set in Renaissance Florence, the Trilogy
follows the fortunes of a young scribe, Tommaso de’ Maffei, in his encounters
with the friends and enemies of Lorenzo the Magnificent and the artists and
thinkers who lent his court such glittering distinction. True both to the
spirit and dramatic history of the Quattrocentro,
these engaging narratives offer convincing portraits of such luminaries as
Botticelli, Simonetta Vespucci, Poliziano, Leonardo da Vinci, Pico della
Mirandola, Savonarola, Erasmus and the English Platonists and, behind them all,
the intriguingly elusive figure of Marsilio Ficino, whose wisdom and
scholarship inspired one of the most important evolutions of European culture.
Yet all these formidable characters and themes are imagined with the
confidence, fidelity and good humour of an author so deeply engrossed in her
material that the novels almost read as an artistically satisfying act of
channelling. One might equally well say as an act of love.

A great painting by Botticelli inspired each
volume of the trilogy (La Primavera,
Pallas and the Centaur and The Birth
of Venus), and each of them sticks to the known facts of history
supplemented by the vigorous activity of what the author calls the ‘rational
imagination’, which is both highly intuitive and capable of deeply
compassionate understanding. By the end of the third volume Lorenzo is dead and
the glory of Florence has been scourged by Savonarola’s bonfire of the
vanities; but Tomasso has recovered what he had lost - the courage to love -
and his story affirms that ‘the divine world is here, now, but we clothe it in
temporality, in desire, in misery, and know it not.’

One might have thought the demanding task
completed there, but Linda Proud’s questing imagination was drawn deep into her
fascination with the morally complex character of Fra Filippo Lippi and a
compelling new novel, A Gift for the
Magus, emerged. Set earlier than the trilogy, it tells the story of an
artist who combined an angelic vision and the skill of a master craftsman with
a talent for procrastination and for frequently falling in and out of trouble. While
offering masterful depictions of the worldly-wise Cosimo de Medici and the
saintly Fra Angelico, the novel’s main concern is to interrogate the true
nature of goodness through a humane appraisal of a man whose appetite for life
rendered him incapable of fidelity to his monastic vows. Like the books of the
Trilogy it’s a terrific read.

Novels which offer a beguiling narrative
while exploring the ambiguities of experience, the rich symbology of great art
and the claims of the spiritual intellect are rare these days. Linda Proud’s
historical novels stand up well beside those of Mary Renault, Zoe Luxembourg
and Marguerite Youcenar. They deserve much wider public attention than they
have been afforded.

About the Author

Born in 1949 in
Hertfordshire, UK, Linda Proud started writing historical fiction early, in
school exercise books. Around the age of 14 she had discovered the novels of
Mary Renault, set in ancient Greece, and fallen in love with the genre which
brings the past to life.

In 1971 she began a
career in picture research in publishing and, after a few years, went freelance
in order to devote more time to writing. The Botticelli Trilogy had seeded
itself as an idea in 1974, but it was to take 11 years to do the research and
develop writing skills. The first volume, A
Tabernacle for the Sun, won a bursary award from Southern Arts and a
month's residence at the writers' retreat of Hawthornden Castle. It was
published by Allison and Busby in 1997. The publisher, however, refused the
second volume, Pallas and the Centaur,
forcing Linda to go independent. Pallas
was the first publication of Godstow Press, which she founded with her husband
David in 2003.

Linda gave up picture
research with the twentieth century, her skills and experience made redundant
by the advent of the new technology. At that point she began a career in
creative writing, teaching American students studying at Oxford University,
working primarily for Sarah Lawrence College, Stanford University and,
latterly, Shimer College.

HNS Indie Award 2014HNS Indie Award Short List 2014judged by Orna Ross
1. The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams by Bill Page2. Blackmore’s Treasure by Derek Rogers (withdrawn, author deceased)3. Jacobites' Apprentice by David Ebsworth4. A Gift for the Magus by Linda Proud5. The Prodigal Son by Anna Belfrage6. The Bow of Heaven: Book 1: The Other Alexander by Andrew Levkoff7. Khamsin: The Devil Wind of the Nile by Inge H. Borg8. The Subtlest Soul by Virginia Cox9. Samoa by J. Robert Shafferand the 2014 Four Finalists are:judged by Elizabeth Chadwick
1. Jacobites' Apprentice by David Ebsworth2. A Gift for the Magus by Linda Proud3. The Subtlest Soul by Virginia Cox4 Samoa by J. Robert Shaffer

26 August 2014

This year, 2014, the Historical Novel Society has introduced for the first time, an annual award for the best Indie / Self-Published Historical Novel, with winner and runner-up prizes kindly sponsored by Orna Ross, bestselling literary novelist and director of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and Geri Clouston of Indie B.R.A.G. There were eight eventual short-listed writers, from which four finalists were chosen by Orna Ross, with award-winning historical novelist Elizabeth Chadwick selecting the winner and runner-up.

Our judges found it very difficult to make their selections as the quality of writing

was excellent, and to thank the authors, I would like to feature them all here on my Blog

So please welcome

Anna Belfrage author of The Prodigal Son

Religious persecution, love and time travel – perfect ingredients for a 17th century novel!

In an article I recently read, Mr Richard N Haass (former advisor to Colin Powell) draws parallels between what is happening today in the Middle East and the religious drama that afflicted Europe during the 17th century. Having someone put it like that makes that distant past somewhat more comprehensible – and fearsome. After all, how many of us would like to be stuck in the ongoing violence in Iraq or Syria, in Gaza or Israel?

I have always been something of a history buff – it was a traumatic day in my life when I sadly concluded that time travel was not possible, and ergo I would not be able to transport myself back in time to live first hand all those cataclysmic events I was so fascinated by. These days, I am rather happy that I remain safely ensconced in my armchair while reading about the gruesome events that have shaped our past, our present – and our future.

This is especially true when looking at the 17th century. A fascinating period in time, this century straddles the vestiges of the old and the beginning of the new. At one end, we have the Renaissance, at the other the Age of Enlightenment, and in between a century of war, of religious persecution, of budding nations and global exploration. In Mr Haass words, a century of defined by the bloody conflicts between fundamentalism and modernism, between budding national states and within said states, with governments forced to relinquish control over parts of their territory to militant groups that wreak havoc and death, creating millions of refugees. Not, perhaps, the time and age one would chose for a vacation.

To properly understand the 17th century, one must, I believe, start by attempting to understand the religious landscape. And to do that, one needs to go back to the 16th century and dear old Luther and Calvin. The single most important event from an educational perspective was when these reformers of the Church insisted that people should have access to the Bible in vernacular – and be able to read it. In one fell swoop, the priest’s role as intermediary between the worshiper and God was eliminated, and even more importantly, the worshiper no longer listened to the priest retelling stories from the Bible, he/she (yup; ladies as well) could read them themselves – and interpret them.

Many readers lead to many interpretations – and the Protestant Reformation blew apart into multiple factions, soon just as much at each other’s throats as at the throats of the hated Catholics (A sentiment returned in full by the Catholics). Presbyterians considered Anglicans to be borderline papists. Quakers sighed over the whole lot of sectarian violence. Puritans wrinkled their nose at anyone not following their particular version of Calvinism. Baptists were latecomers to the party and viewed with mistrust.

From a modern perspective, we don’t quite understand how religion could be such a big issue. People died for their beliefs? Seriously? We shake our head in astonishment – but all we have to do is to study the mess that is present day Middle East to realise people still die for their beliefs – violently.

In the 17th century, religious preference became one of the first freedoms man was willing to fight and die for. People did not protest the horrendous inequalities in material wealth. Gender issues were not even invented yet – or rather they were considered utterly insignificant, as everyone knew a woman was inferior to man in most things. But both men and women (and female martyrs were held in as high regard as male ones) willingly went to their death for their beliefs. Some were chained to stakes and left to meet their fate in the rising tides. Some were burnt alive. Some were “simply” hanged. All of them had in common that they were not about to compromise when it came to their beliefs in God.

This is the background to my book The Prodigal Son. To be more precise, it is set in the immediate aftermath of the Restoration, when Charles II’s advisors decided to implement a number of laws – collectively known as the Clarendon Code – that had as its purpose to bring all religious factions to heel and have them recognise the king as head of State and Church. Not the most popular move in Scotland, let me tell you – in fact, more or less anathema to the powerful Scottish Kirk. And so yet another vicious cycle of persecution began, with the die-hard Presbyterians being the persecuted, the determined Anglicans/Episcopalians the pursuers.

In conclusion, Restoration Scotland was not the most salubrious of environments if one was a convinced Presbyterian – something which my protagonists experience first-hand. In The Prodigal Son, Matthew Graham is at constant loggerheads with the powers that be, and more than once he places his life – and the life of his wife and children – at risk to save dissident minister Sandy Peden. At times, this leads to substantial strain in the Graham marriage. At others, it is through the strength of their love for each other that Alex and Matthew can escape the fears and concerns that colour their everyday life.

While perfectly readable as a stand-alone, The Prodigal Son is actually the third book in The Graham Saga – the story of two people who should never have met. My male protagonist, Matthew Graham, is a devout Presbyterian, a veteran of the Commonwealth armies and a man who, initially at least, tends to see the world as black or white. Which is why I gifted him with Alex Lind, an opinionated modern woman who had the misfortune (or not) of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, thereby being dragged three centuries back in time to land concussed and badly singed at an astounded Matthew’s feet.

Due to religious persecution and an adventurous life in general, Matthew Graham and his wife end up in the Colony of Maryland, there to build a new life for themselves and their children. Not an easy existence, and in the recently released sixth book of the saga, Revenge and Retribution, things will become excessively exciting and dangerous for both Matthew and Alex.

***

All of Anna’s books are available on Amazon US and Amazon UK (links below)

For more information about Anna Belfrage and her books, visit her website or stop by her blog

For a somewhat more visual presentation of The Graham Saga, why not watch the book trailer?

HNS Indie Award 2014HNS Indie Award Short List 2014judged by Orna Ross1. The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams by Bill Page2. Blackmore’s Treasure by Derek Rogers (withdrawn, author deceased)3. Jacobites' Apprentice by David Ebsworth4. A Gift for the Magus by Linda Proud5. The Prodigal Son by Anna Belfrage6. The Bow of Heaven: Book 1: The Other Alexander by Andrew Levkoff7. Khamsin: The Devil Wind of the Nile by Inge H. Borg8. The Subtlest Soul by Virginia Cox9. Samoa by J. Robert Shafferand the 2014 Four Finalists are:judged by Elizabeth Chadwick1. Jacobites' Apprentice by David Ebsworth2. A Gift for the Magus by Linda Proud3. The Subtlest Soul by Virginia Cox4 Samoa by J. Robert Shaffer

23 August 2014

This year, 2014, the Historical Novel Society has introduced for the first time, an annual award for the best Indie / Self-Published Historical Novel, with winner and runner-up prizes kindly sponsored by Orna Ross, bestselling literary novelist and director of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and Geri Clouston of Indie B.R.A.G. There were eight eventual short-listed writers, from which four finalists were chosen by Orna Ross, with award-winning historical novelist Elizabeth Chadwick selecting the winner and runner-up.

It’s a curious experience for someone like
me, who has spent her entire adult life studying the culture of a particular
historical period from an academic perspective, to turn to writing a fictional
narrative set in that period. In some respects, it is all strangely familiar.
Any scholar who works on literary history (or any form of history) necessarily
becomes so immersed in the period she works on that she comes to feel almost as
at home there as in the modern world—if not more! So, trying to get inside the
heads of people who lived five hundred years ago was not a particularly novel
exercise for me. It’s something I have spent every day of my life doing since
the age of around twenty-one.

And yet, and yet, and yet … Writing a piece
of fiction is a very different experience from writing an academic study. Most
obviously, the creative freedom involved is vastly different, even if you’re
aiming for a good degree of historical accuracy. The Subtlest Soul tracks a five-year period of Italian political
history pretty closely, so much so that you could use it as a background primer
for the study of Machiavelli’s Prince.
The main political events succeed one another in the order that they happened,
and I have made only minor deviations from the historical record, all of which
are diligently registered in an endnote. That still leaves a considerable
leeway for invention, however, in a way that was rather liberating for me after
a professional life as a slave to fact! My protagonist is a fictional figure
and I have woven in a fictional spy/love/coming-of-age plot, incorporating some
fairly outrageous adventure elements, alongside my more sober historical
material (not that the historical material is especially sober in this case—we
are talking about the era of the Borgias, after all).

One great novelty for me was that writing a
novel forced me to imagine the material conditions of life in the early
sixteenth century in more detail than a literary or intellectual historian
generally has to: how people dressed, what they ate, how they lit their rooms, how
long it took to travel from one place to another in different seasons of the
year. All this wasn’t exactly remote for me, as there has been a strong
convergence between literary history and material history in recent years (one
of the most interesting academic conferences I have attended recently was on Renaissance
accessories, with talks on mirrors, scissors, fans, handkerchiefs, etc.—almost all
delivered by people who first cut their academic teeth on literary studies).
Still, however much time I have spent in sixteenth-century minds in my life,
this was the first time I had really tried to place myself imaginatively inside
a sixteenth-century skin. I found
that aspect of writing the novel very interesting, and feel it may even have
enriched my academic work.

The period I write about in the novel, the
opening years of the sixteenth century, is one of the most dramatic and
momentous of this whole period of Italian history. It’s a time when Leonardo da
Vinci’s career was at its peak, when Raphael and Michelangelo were starting
theirs; when the Borgias were astounding all observers with their audacious
political scheming and military adventurism; and when Machiavelli was
elaborating the explosive political thought that he would unleash on the world
with The Prince. All this leaves a
mark on the novel. The political plot tracks the rise and fall of Cesare
Borgia, and Leonardo and Machiavelli both appear as characters (Leonardo in a
cameo; Machiavelli in a more substantial role). Machiavelli’s writings also
inform the plot of the novel in all kinds of ways. At a narrative level, the
political plot of the novel tracks events that Machiavelli wrote about in The Prince and in some of his shorter
essays and diplomatic dispatches.
Thematically, as well, the novel engages with one of Machiavelli’s core
themes in The Prince: the need for
the successful political actor to master ‘the ways of the lion and the
fox’—force and fraud.

My narrative territory in the novel has
been much explored in recent years. A few months before I published The Subtlest Soul, another, very
different novel appeared that exploits some of the same historical material and
also features Machiavelli as a character, Michael Ennis’s The Malice of Fortune (Anchor). There’s also an overlap, of course,
with the HBO series The Borgias—a
production about which I have rather mixed feelings. On the one hand, I feel
goodwill towards anything that popularizes ‘my’ period, and you would have to
have a heart of stone not to enjoy the spectacle of Jeremy Irons hamming it up as
Rodrigo Borgia. On the other hand, I wouldn’t say The Borgias was exactly outstanding in terms of historical
accuracy. There’s a Euro-production on the same subject, called Borgia, which does a better job on that
score.

I approached writing The Subtlest Soul in an entirely noncommercial manner. The
recommended approach for genre novelists who want to make money by writing is
to identify the genre they wish to write in; to gain an accurate idea of its
conventions through analysis of successful examples; and finally to craft a
successful example themselves. Bernard Cornwell has a very informative account
on his website of his own formation, which followed these lines. I approached
the task—or adventure—in a far more amateurish manner. I essentially set off to
write the kind of historical novel I would personally like to have with me if I
were embarking on a long-haul flight (something I do rather a lot). I wanted to
write a novel crafted to a decent literary standard, but plot-driven and full
of incident and colour; sufficiently accurate in historical terms for a reader
to learn something about the period, but also true to fiction’s vocation of
telling a good yarn. Other than that, I started with no real parameters or
guidelines; I just started writing and watched what emerged.

I don’t know what a publisher would think
of the formula I came up with, but the great thing about self-publishing is
that it allows you to reach out to readers over publishers’ heads. I’ve been
encouraged by the response to my novel so far, and it’s wonderful to have
reached the finalists’ list for the HNS’s first Indie Award. Helen Hollick
deserves a medal for having got this award going, and she and Steve Donoghue and
their review teams deserve another for their tireless labours separating the
wheat/chaff/sheep/goats among self-published historical novels. It’s hard work,
but exactly what needs to be done if self-publishing is to earn its place at
the literary table.

Virginia Cox was born in Devon,
England, and educated at Cambridge University, where she completed a PhD in
Italian literature.

She taught at the universities of Edinburgh, London (UCL),
and Cambridge before moving to the Department of Italian Studies at New York
University in 2003. Her specialist fields are Italian Renaissance literature
and intellectual history and the history of rhetoric. Her latest academic book
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) is a bilingual anthology of lyric verse
by women poets of the Italian Renaissance

HNS Indie Award 2014HNS Indie Award Short List 2014judged by Orna Ross1. The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams by Bill Page2. Blackmore’s Treasure by Derek Rogers (withdrawn, author deceased)3. Jacobites' Apprentice by David Ebsworth4. A Gift for the Magus by Linda Proud5. The Prodigal Son by Anna Belfrage6. The Bow of Heaven: Book 1: The Other Alexander by Andrew Levkoff7. Khamsin: The Devil Wind of the Nile by Inge H. Borg8. The Subtlest Soul by Virginia Cox9. Samoa by J. Robert Shafferand the 2014 Four Finalists are:judged by Elizabeth Chadwick1. Jacobites' Apprentice by David Ebsworth2. A Gift for the Magus by Linda Proud3. The Subtlest Soul by Virginia Cox4 Samoa by J. Robert Shaffer

19 August 2014

This year, 2014, the Historical Novel Society has introduced for the first time, an annual award for the best Indie / Self-Published Historical Novel, with winner and runner-up prizes kindly sponsored by Orna Ross, bestselling literary novelist and director of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and Geri Clouston of Indie B.R.A.G. There were eight eventual short-listed writers, from which four finalists were chosen by Orna Ross, with award-winning historical novelist Elizabeth Chadwick selecting the winner and runner-up.

Our judges found it very difficult to make their selections as the quality of writing was excellent, and to thank the authors, I would like to feature them all here on my Blog

So please welcome Bill Page, author of The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams

THE FOURTH CENTURY ROMAN COTSWOLDS

Firstly, my thanks to Helen for giving me space on her blog.
Secondly, my apologies for not providing a photograph of myself: inexplicably,
I don’t seem to show up in photos (or mirrors).

The fourth century has rightly been called the Golden Age of
Roman Britain. My first two novels, The Moon on the Hills and its
stand-alone sequel, The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams (of which more on my website, www.billpageauthor.co.uk), are partly
set in the Cotswolds of the late 360s AD, towards the end of that Golden Age,
when the cracks in the façade were only just beginning to appear. The (distant)
background to both novels is the Barbarica
Conspiratio – those seemingly co-ordinated invasions in 367 by Picts and
other barbarian tribes from beyond the frontiers of the empire – and the depredations
of the roaming bands of army deserters which followed in their wake.

Why set the novels in
the Cotswolds? Three reasons. First, because unlike so much of lowland Britain,
its landscapes, particularly those around the steep scarp edges of the
north-west, have in essence altered very little since Roman times. Second, the
Cotswolds were the centre of a materially rich villa culture, perhaps the
richest in all Britain. And third, because even today, away from the
chocolate-box villages, it can be a lonely, mysterious land. A land where it is
possible to imagine, as the people of those times must have imagined, one or
more of the Genii Cucullati – that
triad of little hooded gods depicted in almost abstract form on a stone plaque
now in Corinium Museum – drifting through a wood or crossing a hillside sheep
pasture in the dying light of a summer dusk or winter evening.

But for all its material wealth, fourth century Roman
Britain is something of an enigma: artefact rich but document poor, and the
biographies and even the names of many of its people have vanished forever into
the black hole of the fifth century Dark Age. Of the few documents that have
come down to us, the most important is the history of the period 354 to 378
written by Ammianus Marcellinus, although he was an army officer whose home
city was far-away Antioch and who had almost certainly never visited Britain
when he wrote his account of the Conspiratio
and subsequent events.

Although the fourth century saw the beginning of the slow
transition from the Ancient to the Medieval world, in Britain evidence for
Christianity is sparse and it would seem that, particularly in the countryside,
belief in the multiplicity of dark old gods and goddesses of the Romano-Celtic
pantheons remained strong.

It was also an age where, empire-wide, individuals finally began
to lose faith in the power of the state to defend them against the evils of the
world (or perhaps came to regard the state as the greatest evil of all) and to search
for a saviour god or gods – Christian or pagan – who they prayed would protect
them, both in this life and the hoped-for better life that awaited them after
death.

WHY DID I SELF-PUBLISH?

Because I had no real choice. Some ten years ago I
approached a number of literary agents with an earlier version of The Moon on the Hills. I received a
(very) few encouraging replies, but nothing more. So I re-wrote Moon (and re-wrote, and re-wrote), by which time several more years
had gone by. Then, rather than again go through the interminable,
soul-destroying (and probably futile) process of trying to get an agent, I
decided to self-publish through Matador of Leicester.

After most re-writes I paid for a manuscript appraisal by
one or other of the more prominent companies which offer such assessment services.
Would it be heresy to suggest that the feedback was usually not worth the not
inconsiderable sums required? Probably, but I’ll suggest it anyway.

Now well past 60, I am aware that my chances of landing a
real publishing contract (ie. one where some optimist publishes your work for
free, and even considers paying you for the privilege) are as near zero as
makes no difference. So, no benevolent editor to encourage me, chivvy me along
and steer me away from the rocks; but also no one (except myself) to steer me onto
those rocks either. I tell myself (and sometimes even believe) that this is a curiously
liberating situation, because it leaves me free to write whatever I choose and
take as long as I need to do so. And if a few people actually like the end
result, then hurrah!

WORK IN PROGRESS

Is a third novel, provisionally titled One Summer in Arcadia, which I am in the process of
re-writing (again).Set in 370, in
the months following the crushing of Valentinus’s attempted rebellion, it opens
with Canio living the life of a country gentleman in a villa he bought with the
looted gold acquired in Sower. With
the villa came the woman who is now his mistress, the beautiful, enigmatic
Trifosa, who spent her childhood at the great Chedworth villa, only some ten
miles away to the south. And there at Chedworth, newly returned home after
seven traumatic years in the army on the German frontier, is Antoninus, a man who
has unexpectedly inherited following the deaths of his estranged father and
twin brother. And it seems that Antoninus and Trifosa were once very
close.

Canio’s villa is based on the one in Spoonley Wood, a couple
of miles south-east of Winchcombe, Gloucestershire. Built around three sides of
a large courtyard in a once-idyllic spot between two streams tumbling down from
springs which rise on the high ground above, in its day it must have been an impressive
sight and the centre of a great estate. Today it is little more than a few
crumbling walls and a scatter of stones half-hidden among the rampant vegetation
of the wood, a sad contrast to the beautifully preserved remains of Chedworth villa
(which also plays a prominent role in the novel). Perhaps in some small way Arcadia will make it live again.

In the aftermath of the devastating barbarian invasions which came to be known as the Barbarica Conspiratio there are:

• A soldier searching for a fortune in looted gold which a dying man told him lies hidden beneath the waters

of a lake on the far side of the Great Marshes, many miles to the south of the Cotswold Hills where the story

begins.

• A young priestess searching for a man who mysteriously disappeared a year before, hoping that by finding

him she will restore her faith in the goddess she thought was protecting him.

• A small brass figurine of the sinister underworld goddess Hecate.

And linking all three is a story said to have begun with a girl picking flowers in a meadow in Sicily on a summer s day long, long ago when the Ancient World was young.

The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams is set in those parts of the Roman province of Britannia Prima which were later to become Gloucestershire and Somerset. It is a stand-alone sequel to The Moon on the Hills Matador 2009 .

About the Author:

Bill Page has had a lifelong interest in Roman Britain, particularly the villas and settlements of the Cotswold Hills. He lives in South Worcestershire, within sight of the northern end of the Cotswolds where the novel begins and ends.

HNS Indie Award 2014HNS Indie Award Short List 2014judged by Orna Ross1. The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams by Bill Page2. Blackmore’s Treasure by Derek Rogers (withdrawn, author deceased)3. Jacobites' Apprentice by David Ebsworth4. A Gift for the Magus by Linda Proud5. The Prodigal Son by Anna Belfrage6. The Bow of Heaven: Book 1: The Other Alexander by Andrew Levkoff7. Khamsin: The Devil Wind of the Nile by Inge H. Borg8. The Subtlest Soul by Virginia Cox9. Samoa by J. Robert Shafferand the 2014 Four Finalists are:judged by Elizabeth Chadwick1. Jacobites' Apprentice by David Ebsworth2. A Gift for the Magus by Linda Proud3. The Subtlest Soul by Virginia Cox4 Samoa by J. Robert Shaffer

17 August 2014

This year, 2014, the Historical Novel Society has introduced for the first time, an annual award for the best Indie / Self-Published Historical Novel, with winner and runner-up prizes kindly sponsored by Orna Ross, bestselling literary novelist and director of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and Geri Clouston of Indie B.R.A.G. There were eight eventual short-listed writers, from which four finalists were chosen by Orna Ross, with award-winning historical novelist Elizabeth Chadwick selecting the winner and runner-up.

Our judges found it very difficult to make their selections as the quality of writing

was excellent, and to thank the authors, I would like to feature them all here on my Blog

So please welcome

David Ebsworth and his novelThe Jacobites' Apprentice

I
can’t recall now whether I found them
on the streets of Manchester or whether they found me. But the truth is that I came across the germ of The Jacobites’ Apprentice one day in
2008 when I had time to kill between meetings in that UK city.

18th Century Coffee House

I was wandering the district that’s
bounded by the Irwell, the Hanging Bridge, the Cathedral, Hunt’s Bank, Market
Street, and St Ann’s Square – the heart of the 17th Century town
that was then still dwarfed by its neighbour, Salford – and each of the blue
plaques I came across drew me steadily into the story of Bonnie Prince
Charlie’s Lancashire supporters. Many of these were disenfranchised Catholic
merchants, or unemployed fustian workers, or Catholic gentry resenting the loss
of their power since the Hanoverian Germans – George I and, now, in 1745,
George II – had ruled Britain. But, in the early part of that year, they had
high hopes that things might change. Prince Charles Edward, heir to the Stuart
dynasty had promised to lead an invasion to restore their lost Crown. A
Jacobite, of course, was ‘a follower of Jacobus’ – this being the Latin version
of James, and James the Second being the last Stuart King, deposed in 1688. So
Charles Edward vowed to put his father on the throne (supporters already
referred to his father as James the Third) and to chase German George back to
Hanover.

Manchester Jacobites

There was only one problem. Most
people in England were either now settled under Hanoverian rule or, simply, had
no stomach for yet another civil war. And, in Scotland, where the Stuarts’
support was supposed to be strongest, less than half the Highland clans would
come out for the Jacobites while, in the Lowlands, that support was even
weaker.

Many northern English towns also had
Jacobite supporters but none quite so strong as in Manchester. There the town
was split right down the middle with the two factions vying for power. And,
when Charles Edward eventually landed in Scotland, raised his standard and
finally marched south towards London, it was Manchester that drew him like a magnet.
He even managed to raise a specific regiment of 300 men there.

So, as I came across those blue
plaques that marked the location of those events, there too were the fictional
characters who eventually filled the pages of The Jacobites’ Apprentice. The rebel Tory merchant and part-time
tea smuggler, Titus Redmond. His licentious wife, Maria-Louise. Their wayward daughter,
Rosina. And the Redmonds’ eponymous and naïve apprentice, Aran Owen. Then the
Hanoverian Whig loyalists: James Bradley the vengeful builder; coffee-house
proprietor, tax collector and tribade, Elizabeth Cooper; Sir Edward Stanley, Earl
of Derby and somewhat inept High Sheriff of Lancashire; and murderous Government
spy, Dudley Striker. And these all surrounded by many of the real-life figures
who took part in this strange story.

I wrote it during 2010-11 and
self-published, through SilverWood Books, in March 2012. The book had been
rejected by various traditional publishers and agents by then, and I don’t
blame them. It’s a big blockbuster of a story, with over 300,000 words, even
after careful editing. And this is something of a drawback, since it requires a
huge leap of faith for readers to take a chance on buying such a huge first-time
novel.

In
addition, it deals with some difficult themes and even the political thrust of
the plot upset lots of people. We’re supposed (apparently) to write Jacobite
stories with some romantic notion of a dashing but ill-fated Bonnie Prince
Charlie and his colourful kilted Highlanders. But the truth was somewhat
different, of course, with neither group of leaders caring very much about the
impact of further civil unrest upon the ordinary folk of Britain – who, of
course, were left to pay the ultimate price following the disasters at Carlisle
andCulloden. And, yes, there are echoes
of today’s nationalism in the story. There are roughly the same number of Scots
beguiled and misled by Alex Salmond today as were steered into disaster by that
other ‘Bonnie Prince’ in 1745.

And then there’s the big problem! I tried writing the story
in several different styles – the first version in the First Person, from Aran
Owen’s viewpoint; the second in a more traditional Third Person past tense. But
neither of them worked. It was only when I tried the present tense that the
tale really came to life. So I stuck with that, and adopted an almost
‘contemporary’ Jane Austen-esque voice for the telling. Personally, I like it –
though I understand that this won’t be to everybody’s taste. As it happens, if
I was ever going to produce a second edition, that’s the one thing I wouldn’t
change. This view was reinforced when, at the end of last year, I began to
‘adapt’ Jacobites for a potential
television series in ten episodes – two of which are already fully scripted and
the rest in draft format. No takers yet, but it was a useful
exercise that made me realize how visual and, therefore, “present tense” it is.
There are some moments in the plot that I really enjoy, like the machinations
which develop during a Manchester performance of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera - though these really
come to life in the adaptation. Like Deadwood
meets Amadeus.

But, back in 2012, I had a huge amount
of positive support for the original project too, and hence my decision to
self-publish, almost against my own judgement, to be honest. Yet, as the
finished product was taking shape – including the excellent cover design put
together by the inimitable Cathy Helms at Avalon Graphics – I began to
understand that this was a story that at least deserved to be read. And it was
one of the proudest and most emotional moments of my life when The Jacobites’ Apprentice was favourably
reviewed by the Historical Novel Society, who deemed it “worthy of a place on
every historical fiction bookshelf.”

BiographyDavid Ebsworth is the pen name of writer, Dave McCall, a former negotiator and Regional Secretary for Britain’s Transport & General Workers’ Union. He was born in Liverpool (UK) in 1949, growing up there in the ‘Sixties, but has lived for the past thirty-four years in Wrexham (North Wales) with his wife, Ann.Since their retirement in 2008, the couple have spent about six months of each year in southern Spain. They have also been keen travellers to other parts of the world, including various other countries of Europe, China, Nicaragua, Colombia, the United States, Canada and KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.Dave began to write seriously in the following year, 2009, and maintains a strict daily writing and marketing routine - though he still manages to find time for a regular morning swim, as well as for sailing.Apart from that, he still does some voluntary work for the TUC (Britain’s union confederation), representing them in the organisations... Migrant Workers North West, Justice for Colombia and the Manufacturing Institute.Dave is a member of the Historical Novel Society, the International Brigades Memorial Trust, the Anglo-Zulu War Historical Society and the Alliance of Independent Authors.

HNS Indie Award 2014HNS Indie Award Short List 2014judged by Orna Ross1. The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams by Bill Page2. Blackmore’s Treasure by Derek Rogers (withdrawn, author deceased)3. Jacobites' Apprentice by David Ebsworth4. A Gift for the Magus by Linda Proud5. The Prodigal Son by Anna Belfrage6. The Bow of Heaven: Book 1: The Other Alexander by Andrew Levkoff7. Khamsin: The Devil Wind of the Nile by Inge H. Borg8. The Subtlest Soul by Virginia Cox9. Samoa by J. Robert Shafferand the 2014 Four Finalists are:judged by Elizabeth Chadwick1. Jacobites' Apprentice by David Ebsworth2. A Gift for the Magus by Linda Proud3. The Subtlest Soul by Virginia Cox4 Samoa by J. Robert Shaffer